LIGHT IS EVERYTHING!!!
That’s what I keep telling my online students with the BPSOP, and my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet.
Having said that, what happens if you suddenly lose the light or needed it when it just wasn’t there in the first place? In my forty-six year career, I’ve been in situations where I wasn’t allowed to prepare for by scouting ahead of time or a photo op that was thought up by a client at the last moment and expecting me to “come through”.
I just love it when an art director or a graphic designer forgets to tell me something that was requested by the “powers that be”, and if I don’t figure something out…and quick, all of a sudden there’s a bad taste in everyone’s mouth; I become persona non grata (not welcomed at the agency anymore) for any chance at new work.
So, what do I do? I improvise!!!
The above photo is a good example of improvising when your forced to shot where there’s no light, and since I was shooting at a rig, bringing in lights was not an option. I was shooting for Budweiser and they wanted a portrait of some of the Roughnecks. It started out as a potential great sunset, but thirty minutes before I started shooting , a thunderstorm began to develop bringing with it some very dark ominous clouds. and before I knew it covered most of the late afternoon light.
In a matter of minutes, everything became very dark and because of some new pipe being brought in, I couldn’t stand on the other side of the rig where I would have has at least a little light. I looked around for something, anything I could use to cast light on their faces. I looked over on the ground and saw the welding equipment. I had one of the men fire it up so that it wold make as large of a flame as possible, and that’s what I used to light the men.
Here are a few more photos where I had to come up with a way to light the people. In each photo, I added light that I found nearby:
In the photo of the man behind the Coke truck, the client wanted the lettering on the truck to show up, so I took a small flashlight out of my bag and had him hold it on the truck’s door. The man about to swallow the torch was shot during a Luau in Hawaii. The man shoveling coal was actually in another part of the building. i brought him over and put him in the light. I also put the man reading off his clipboard in front of the headlight, and I used the lantern to light the grandfather reading to his granddaughter since there was no other source of light.
The next time you’re in a similar situation, look around because the answer might be right in front of you. It could be anything from a flashlight to a headlight. You just gotta use your imagination, and when you can do that, the skies the limit!!!
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and watch for my new workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come improvise with me sometime.
JoeB
Will send you that pic Joe. Sorry for the snark.